Webcam API w/ Filters and Adjustments

[Reddic]

@SpriggsySpriggs, can we control camera zoom with the API?

We're grabbing raw pixel data but we're not really controlling the camera itself. Now, if we open the camera dialog again during preview, we can use Windows' sliders to adjust zoom and such.

Gotcha... maybe if the camera's software itself has an API, but not that important for anything I'd be looking to do.  You've done quite enough, thank you! :-D 

I did some googling on generating an AVI, I found something about using FFMPEG for turning a bunch of still images into a movie, so maybe that could work (just saving each frame to a file and then shelling out to FFMPEG)? 

I'll play with this stuff later. One thing I want to try is "video echo"... Merging the images from the camera as they come in with what's already on the screen... Maybe it will show trails or look trippy. Another idea is having 2 laptops each with a webcam, and having laptop #2 send its pictures over a LAN to laptop #1 and merging them in some funky way. I don't know what kind of throughput it would need for 320x240 resolution at 30 FPS? This stuff is fun to play with, that's for sure :-)

For merging the camera feeds in real-time, you’d likely need a solid network connection between the two laptops. For 320x240 at 30 FPS, the required bandwidth would be around 1.5 Mbps (assuming uncompressed video). You could probably get away with even lower if you compress the video a bit.